How to Build Topiary Frames
- 1). Locate a base form for your topiary. Good base forms include rubber balls, cement garden statues or stuffed animals.
- 2). Wrap sheets of light-gauge chicken wire over your base form. Clip the edges of the wire with floral wire cutters. Create half of the form at a time.
- 3). Join the two form halves together; wrap floral wire around the seam where the two halves meet, using floral wire pliers.
- 4). Soak sphagnum peat moss in water until it is saturated.
- 5). Stuff the peat moss through the openings in the chicken wire until the frame is entirely filled with peat moss. Stuff the smallest areas first, and then fill the larger areas.
- 6). Pull topiary plants out of containers and insert the roots through the holes in the chicken wire and into the peat moss. Make sure that the roots are completely covered by the moss. Mist the plants with a misting bottle to keep them moist until the roots become established in the moss.
- 7). Secure trailing ends of topiary stems to the topiary using hair pins. Plants such as ivy or rosemary will take root where you pin them. This process is called layering.
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